Anthocyanins – Colorful Little Helpers!

How come some fruits and veggies are red, and some are blue?  Anthocyanins!

We have had volunteer named Maritza Sirven with us in the Allen kitchen for a little over a year.  Maritza is a food science student and researcher at Texas A&M University.  She is currently supporting research in her department on the extraction of anthocyanins from potatoes as a potential natural food dye source.  Maritza and I wrote the following post to share a little bit about these amazing little helpers in your food.

Anthocyanins are organic compounds responsible for giving reddish and bluish color to various fruits, veggies, and even flowers.  Besides blueberries, like the ones we served in our pancakes at Fun Friday breakfast, and the blackberries in the cobbler we served on Tuesday, many delicious fruits and vegetables have anthocyanins in them.  These compounds are also present in deep red roses, strawberries, some carrots, red cabbage, and red grapes.  That means that the cran-grape juices we serve have them, as well.  However, the rich colors that anthocyanins create in fresh fruits and vegetables not only make them beautiful, but good for you, too!

Blackberries (Source: Wikipedia)

This is because anthocyanins are a type of polyphenolic organic compounds that serve as a secondary metabolites in plants.  Big words, right?  Let me explain for you.  A metabolite is a substance necessary for the metabolism in a plant, which basically means for the healthy operation of a plant.  Primary metabolites are compounds that are absolutely necessary for a plant to live.  Secondary metabolites are still important to a plant, but are intended to help a plant by carrying out special functions that support the primary ones.  For example, polyphenols like anthocyanins are involved in a plant’s defense against ultraviolet radiation, very much like sunscreen for the plant, and they also help defend a plant against certain diseases.  This helps plants grow strong and healthy fruit, which means healthy food for us.

See the purple skin around the delicate white flesh of this eggplant? Anthocyanins provide natural sunscreen and pest control to protect what’s inside.

In food, polyphenols affect how we perceive foods.  They can add color, flavor, smell, and they can also help with something called oxidative stability.  Oxidation is a term that refers to the way oxygen molecules interact with other substances.  In living things like people and plants, oxidation can damage cells by robbing them of compounds they need, that bond to oxygen molecules.  This makes these cells go looking for replacements for the missing compounds, which can start a chain reaction of cells damaging other cells.  We call these damaged cells “free radicals”.  As such, oxidative stability helps a plant prevent damage from oxidation by slowing down these chain reactions.  This is why anthocyanins are sometimes called “antioxidants”.  This means that the compounds responsible for the beautiful reds, and blue, and purples in fruits and veggies are actually very good for you!

Now, the difference whether a fruit with anthocyanins becomes red, or blue, or purple, has to do with its pH level, or its level of acidity.  Th more acidic the environment inside that fruit, the more red it becomes, while a less acidic environment inside can make a fruit purple or blue.  Chefs understand all about acidity.  Many of our ingredients are actually acids or bases.  Vinegars for example, are acidic.  If I add an acid like apple cider vinegar to a fruit that has anthocyanins in it, the color of that fruit may become brighter or more red.  But if I add a base like baking soda to water, and then place my fruit in this mixture, the fruit will become more blue in color.  Bases are the opposite of acidic, which is also called alkaline.  It is just amazing how these tiny little compounds have such big impact on food!

The acid present inside this bottle of red wine vinegar is keeping the anthocynins that came from grapes red.

While these colors are amazing naturally in the fruits and veggies we eat, scientists are trying to learn how to extract those anthocyanins from fruits and veggies and use them as pigments for other foods.  This is because many foods use artificial colors developed from inorganic sources to give them color.  If you ever look at the ingredients of a package of food and you read something with a number like, “Allura Red (Red Dye #40)”, that is an artificial food coloring agent.  Many candies, cereals, and other foods use these artificial colors.  Scientists are looking for ways to use anthocyanin from fruits as an alternative source to make natural food pigments.  So imagine that!  Anthocyanins may one day not only serve as a natural way to give food colors, but additionally serve as a source of antioxidants!

Chef Dave and Maritza

Culinary Contributions of the Early American Settlers (Menu: Sep. 22, 2014)

America’s story is a lot like this basket.

This week’s menu was inspired by two of our faculty members who teach social studies and history, respectively.  As a chef, it is as easy to focus on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) academics as it is the humanities.  They are after all, the culinary arts AND sciences.  But these two academic pillars form a continuous loop when it comes to the kitchen.  Richard Wrangham’s book, Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human (which you can find at Amazon here), goes to great lengths to explore how technology, specifically the advent of humankind’s control of fire and the application of such to cooking, may have been profoundly cataclysmic in evolving us physically and sociologically.  The development within cultures as the result of such discovery in turn, at least in my view, influenced the development of culinary traditions that exist today.  Certainly, it took millennia to evolve the processes and variations of charring and roasting meat over a crude pit to achieving the perfect roast at home.  Although as we saw at last Friday’s Allen Academy tailgater, we still get to do the ol’ burger burn if we want to!  But it was the last millennium of humankind’s existence that truly intrigues me, because it was in these short thousand years that people began leaving their native continents to explore others, which would eventually allow culinary traditions from around the world to blend and further evolve together.

Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, By Richard Wrangham

It is with gratitude to our faculty that I present a broad weekly menu that celebrates the culinary traditions of both Native Americans, and five different groups of American settlers, with a bit of modern American whimsy.  Monday will continue to touch on the Spanish and Mexican culinary influence in the Americas that we celebrated on September 16th.  Quesadillas have origins that go back to Mexico, fusing Aztec concepts of unleavened bread with European cheese making and wheat-based starches, and combinations of new and old world ingredients into accompaniments like garden salsa.  Tuesday happens to be the day of the autumnal equinox, and the start of Oktoberfest celebrations in many places.  While schnitzels are traditionally pork or veal, we will serve a chicken variety, and mash our potatoes, as opposed to roasting them, with rosemary from the Allen garden.  We’ll also serve a blackberry cobbler, a culinary favorite with Western European origins, using a near ubiquitous berry that is believed to have been available to ancient peoples on at least four continents.

Blackberries (Source: Wikipedia)

Wednesday, we look to the Pacific to celebrate the early Asian settlers with a classic stir fry of beef and vegetables and the ancient staple of white rice, but we’ll keep our young Rams busy with the same pull-apart chop sticks you can find at a Texas Avenue eatery, and of course, very American fortune cookies.  Thursday is Native American Day in the U.S., and we designed a menu to highlight foods that the Caddo culture could have sourced in East Texas. (Read more about the Caddo at the Texas Parks and Wildlife Division here.)  However, we will blend in culinary traditions of the African settlers that significantly influenced food in the South.   There is much anthropological evidence that both the Caddo and enslaved Africans both became adept at growing and rotating low maintenance, high-yield crops, such as with squashes, beans, corn, and potatoes.  A key African tradition involves stewing of meats and vegetables, which is often served over a starch (like gumbo).  It has been said that Africans introduced rice to the south, perhaps not unlike the Asian settlers in the west.  The Africans and their progeny additionally were experienced working with root vegetables, often mashing them, as we will do with sweet potatoes.

Rounding out the week with a little bit of my own fusion, we will put a spin on a Fun Friday Pizza Day, by serving flatbread (pita) pizza sandwiches.  It was a challenging week to plan out, but I had much help from our faculty, which made it a very enjoyable experience.  We have served most of these dishes to our Rams before, but I doubt many of them truly understand how amazingly fortunate they are to be experiencing some of the best fruits of the labor of cultural weaving that has helped create American culture…not to mention Texan culture.  If you haven’t been there yet, I highly recommend visiting the Institute of Texan Cultures in San Antonio, Texas.  Every year in June, the institute hosts the Texas Folklife Festival.  It is an amazing showcase of the various cultures that claim a piece of this state, and has absolutely inspired me over and over again in the kitchen.

The Institute of Texan Cultures

May you find inspiration everywhere you look this week!

Chef Dave

Spain’s Culinary Legacy in Tex-Mex Culture (Menu: Sep. 16, 2014)

Spain and Mexico, sovereigns of two of the six flags that have flown over Texas. (Source: Texas State Historical Association)

September the 16th is a relatively well known Mexican holiday if you are from Texas.  The date essentially marks the ending of Spanish colonialism in what would become the nation of Mexico.  Spanish rule over Mexico extended across centuries, going back to the time of the explorers; specifically to the August 13, 1521 to the conquering of the Aztecs by Spanish explorer Hernán Cortés.  Spanish colonial society quickly stratified into people of varying degrees of Spanish descent, including full blooded Spaniards that hailed from in Spain, “criollos” comprising Spanish people born on Mexican soil, and “mestizos”, the offspring of Spaniards and natives.  Many of us in Texas could probably trace our lineage back to one of these groups.  It was from the population of criollos that the 1810 revolution sprang forth, and ultimately brought freedom to Mexico. (Read about it at Inside-Mexico.com here.)

Public domain photo of Hernán Cortés. (Derived from: Wikipedia)

Now admittedly, today’s menu of beef and chicken fajitas is technically not a Mexican dish.  In fact, the roots appear to be traced right here to Texas. (Read about it in Virginia B. Wood’s Austin Chronicle article here.)  And just like the lowly status of tripe for menudo, and cow head meat for barbacoa, fajitas derive from skirt steak, a cut of meat from the belly once thought to be worthless to ranchers, and accordingly used as a an alternate form of compensation to vaqueros (Mexican cowboys) on cattle drives.  Yet, as is the case with many culinary delights that bare humble origins, these vaqueros learned how to prepare the meat in order to take advantage of that humble bounty.  Now of course, fajitas are the preeminent dish in many Mexican restaurants…in the United States.  I personally love visiting El Mercado (The Market) in San Antonio just to experience the sensory pleasures of a sizzling plate of fajitas leaving a busy kitchen, landing on my table, and being devoured by me.  However, despite being a Texan dish, the components of a fajita plate clearly reveal the culinary influences of Spain.

Great photo of Chef Tyler Florence’s fajitas, which we stay close to in our recipe. (Source: http://www.foodnetwork.com)

When Cortés arrived in the Aztec capital, he would have observed natives eating the primary staple of corn, which existed in abundance.  A version of corn tortillas existed much as they do today.  It was in later years under Spanish rule that wheat as a crop began to produce enough harvest to result in a new form of flatbread, the flour tortilla, to emerge.  The Spanish additionally brought the beef into the region that would eventually become one of the major symbols of agriculture here in Texas and beyond.  The Spanish also introduced cheese, garlic, and onions, which found affinity with native tomatoes, chilies, beans, and squashes.  By the way, our campus garden is not even five weeks old, and just look how big those squash and pumpkins plants are!

The combination of foods from old world Europe and the new world Americas into a major component of modern Mexican culture certainly demonstrates that there were successes worth celebrating when the Spanish explorers made it to the Americas.  The natural migration of Mexicans north into what would become Texas demonstrates yet another success.  History reveals that humanity’s natural desire to explorer and expand has its failures, but those desires also inspire us to connect and co-create.  As such, in celebration of the best of humanity, which often is expressed in the many fusions of foods that create amazing dishes like fajitas, the Allen kitchen will take the opportunity of this important Mexican holiday to celebrate Spain’s culinary influences in what we might call Tex-Mex food today.  Can you hear the sizzle?

Chef Dave

Exploring Memories and Flavors of the Past (Menu: Sep. 15, 2014)

Charles Darwin (Source: http://www.galapagosislands.com)

Hello everyone,

The week ahead will continue to be very thematic on Allen Academy’s menu.  September 15th is a celebration of Charles Darwin’s 1835 arrival at the Galapagos Islands.  Darwin certainly left his mark on humanity.  Even today, Darwin’s work highlights the conflicting ideas of humanity, particularly how and why we live on this rock, behind two other planets in a system of solar satellites, in a spiraling galaxy, in a grand universe that makes us all seem rather insignificant.  I was scanning Netflix a few weeks ago, speed reading through the seemingly endless list of bad movies on that site, when I came across a revamped series of the old show Cosmos.  The original was hosted by Carl Sagan.  It just so happens that I recently also heard Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot passage from his 1994 book, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, again. (ISBN-10: 0345376595, find it here.)  I love hearing the passage in his own words, which you can find on Youtube.

The new series is hosted by Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and explorers not only the so-called heavens, but the origins, status, and future of humanity.  Much concerns humanity’s inevitable missions back into space.  But as much as I like imagining where we’re headed, I love retrospective looks into humanity; so much so, that Darwin’s journey recaptured my attention.  The Galapagos are a small island chain located off the equatorial South American Pacific coast.  In fact, they are about 500 miles away from the country of Ecuador.  Darwin reached the islands while on a five year mission aboard the HMS Beagle, and eventually made amazing discoveries with regard to evolution based on his observations  there.

Visit http://www.cosmosontv.com (Source: Fox)

How amazing, and exotic, and wild, and wondrous, and fearful the journey must have been for the explorers.  The sights, sounds, smells, and all sensations of exploring a new place are amazing.  Edwin Hubble said, “Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science.”  I have to agree with him.  I have been fortunate enough to travel extensively on this pale blue dot, and I love exploring the culinary traditions of the world in my kitchen.  My field is after all, a marriage of science and art.

Many of my travels, and the friendships I forged during those years, took place while serving the military.  I have a good buddy that I was stationed with in Alaska.  He settled a few years ago in Portland, Oregon and started a family.  But my friend has always been an adventurer, a quality I admire.  Circumstances provided an opportunity for him to relocate to Ecuador…and he did!   I keep track of him via Facebook, and it looks like the family is really enjoying the experience.  I hope he gets out to the Galapagos and takes pictures to share!  I know he loves saltwater.

I’m a big saltwater fan, too.  College Station is the first place I have lived in twenty years that wasn’t twenty miles or less away from the coast.  Alina and I had a house in Florida three miles from the Gulf of Mexico, and we loved it.   One of my first jobs in the culinary field was at a culinary store in Tampa that was half retail store front, and the other half was a 30-seat teaching kitchen.  We held an open house-like event in 2011 and I got to meet a really nice couple that was promoting their small company called Pirate Jonny’s  that produces Caribbean style spice rubs and blends, and sauces.  We are friends now, and like my bud in Ecuador, these two are explorers; in fact sailors.  My friend in Tampa is also a landscape architect there, and he provided me with a tutorial that is designed to help set up small garden projects with children.  My campus garden project owes much to him.  And lunch kind of does today, as well.

You think the kids will know that’s not Texas barbeque? (Source: http://www.piratejonnys.com)

Despite the fact that my friends own a company that celebrates the Caribbean, the Spanish influence is unmistakable.  Given that the same Spanish influence exists over much of South America, I thought the kitchen could create a menu that celebrates Darwin’s historic landfall in the Galapagos, by preparing a tropical themed menu.  The menu includes grilled chicken breast with Caribbean barbeque sauce with a side of red beans and rice, tropical fruit, and Chef Alina’s coconut macaroons.  I have no idea whether or not Darwin would have enjoyed this meal, but I’m pretty sure my friends would have.

May you all be fortunate enough to rack up a few of your own travels on this pale blue dot!

Chef Dave

Blue and Bleu (Menu: Sep. 12, 2014)

The best customers I have ever served!

I have the blues.  Why, you ask?  Well, it’s a good thing, really.  Today, Friday the 12^th, 2014, we prepared a meal that celebrates two great institutions.  First the “blue”.  This happens to be the anniversary of the day Madison Academy was officially changed by the brothers Allen and officially renamed Allen Academy.  Allen’s colorful and varied history marks several important days in the evolution of the little private school that became a military academy for boys, and eventually a coed academy that embraces all peoples.  If you know enough about Allen Academy history, then you know that across the years, there has been a sort of change in school colors, with royal slowly replacing navy, and white seemingly relieving yellow as a complementary color.  But the spirit of Allen Academy remains true blue, and should deservingly be celebrated on this day.

Interestingly (to me, anyway), I have been clad in blue since high school:

• I graduated from Del Valle High School in El Paso Texas, school colors – navy and silver.
• I attended Texas El Paso (UTEP) for a year, colors – burnt orange and (then) sky blue.
• Then I joined the Air Force; more navy and silver.
• I graduated from Wayland Baptist University wearing navy and yellow.
• I then graduated from American Military University…red and blue.
• Finally I went to culinary school, graduating from Le Cordon Bleu wearing white and navy

Photo: Le Cordon Bleu

I couldn’t get away from blue if I wanted to.  But I’m not trying to, I wear chef whites or blue polo shirts proudly displaying the colors of the mighty Rams every day, and I couldn’t be happier.   So Fun Friday celebrates both Allen Academy and my culinary alma mater, Le Cordon Bleu – there’s the “bleu”.   The menu for this day is centered on the well-known recipe known as chicken cordon bleu.  While the origins of this dish are not from my alma mater as is sometimes incorrectly presented on the internet, the name sure works out well for me.  By the way, Cordon Bleu means “blue ribbon” in French.

Sportin’ a brand new set of Allen Academy chef whites.

If you haven’t already figured it out, I have had so much fun here, and I am extremely grateful to be able to do what I love while serving so many wonderful people of all ages; AND being able to do it as a staff member at such an historic and future-building center of learning.

Bon appétit!

Chef Dave

Remembering September 11, 2001 (Menu: Sep. 11, 2014)

On September 11, 2001, I was a Staff Sergeant serving in the Air Force.  I was stationed at Hanscom Air Force Base, which sits between historic Lexington and Concord, the colonial towns that saw the beginning of the American Revolutionary War.  I was on a detail that had me out of my office that day.  At that time, I worked in intelligence operations and I was responsible for researching and reporting on threats around the world that might impact airmen from Hanscom on deployment.  While I was on detail, somebody came into the room I was in and basically relayed the information of the first plane attack.  I followed him to the closest TV, thinking it was a small personal aircraft that had maybe lost control.  I arrived just in time to see the second tower get hit live, and immediately set on the half mile walk back to my work building, knowing we were going into crisis mode.

Our newest team member in the Allen kitchen, Jessica, was only in first grade.  In the middle of her daily oral language practice, the school immediately went on lock down.  Interestingly, no one told her class anything, but parents started to show up taking their children home, with some parents crying down the hallways.  She communicated to me that she was too young to understand what was going on.  It made me realize that last year’s graduating class would have only been five years old, or so.  We are now at the point temporally speaking, that today’s students have no memory of the events of that day.

My wife Alina was also an airman on September 11^th, and had just received orders that would have transferred her from Cocoa Beach, Florida to my base.  She eventually made it, and we met while living in the same dorm six months later.  It took a long time for the area to achieve some semblance of normalcy, given that one of the planes originated from Boston.  The hours on base for us respectively became long, the sense of urgency was raised up to new levels, and everything about life for us became more patriotic as people in the community began expressing gratitude for our service.  I couldn’t even buy my own coffee at Starbucks for months afterward, if I went in uniform.

As I hurried to my unit that morning, I couldn’t help but notice how beautiful and quiet the day was.  I found the peace disconcerting.  When I arrived at work, the people in my unit had gathered around a TV, and my commander immediately put us on 24-hour operations, which lasted almost a year.  When I left the service two years later, the government was still reeling from a lack of information technology continuity that may have prevented analysts from identifying the 9/11 attacks in the planning stage, and I went to work for a company that engages in applied research for both defense and homeland security sponsors.  By 2005, I was helping develop analytic capabilities for the new U.S. Terrorism Screening Center, traveling back and forth constantly between Boston and Washington.   A few years later, I found myself in Tampa working on a project supporting capabilities for U.S. Special Operations Command.

The Minuteman Statue in Concord, MA. Notice how his pose indicates vigilance, though he keeps his hand on the plow, indicating his unyielding commitment to community. (Photo: NPS)

I have to admit that by 2009, I was pretty worn out with the work.  My last few tasks in that career field began exploring the use of indigenous programming designed to augment commercially available tools to perform what many now call “deep dive” and “big data” analyses.  I chose to focus on amongst other things, precursors of terrorism.  I found many links between food insecurity, which refers to conditions of both food scarcity and available food that is nevertheless nutritionally deficient, and poor brain development and function.   When combined with cultural issues, to include radicalism, I believe the conditions have been created to allow extreme ideas to take root, like terrorism.

About the same time I was experiencing burnout, I was becoming increasingly envious of all the chefs I saw in the kitchens of restaurants I frequented while on business travel, all of whom seemed much happier than I did doing what they were obviously passionate about.  An old passion reignited in me and Alina, who was also a veteran and defense contractor at the time, and we ended up making distinct career changes into the culinary domain.  I don’t think that we ever really let go of that sense of urgency, though.  It most certainly drives me today as a chef, and in my desire to promote community resiliency as a means of mitigating disaster, be it man-made or by nature.

When I interviewed for the position at Allen Academy in the summer of 2013, I was volunteering as a chef in Moore, Oklahoma after the EF-5 tornado sliced through the city, supporting mass care feeding operations to the displaced and the multitudes of volunteers that had come from all over the country to help.  Interestingly, finding fresh produce became a top priority for the team of chefs that banded together to execute the mission, in part to 1) counter dehydration affecting everybody in the area (the weather in Moore is much like here in summer), 2) optimize nutrition given the physical demands of living through a contingency, and 3) simply to help preserve the dignity of everyone by giving them at least one good thing to look forward to – a balanced, well-executed meal; just a simple thing really, for good people that just like in the days after 9/11 became more than strangers, but the brothers and sisters of humanity.

A team of volunteer chefs in Moore, Oklahoma, July 2013

Damage in Moore, Oklahoma.

It is with this perspective that Alina and I, and Jessica, come to work at Allen Academy every day.  We have the privilege of serving tomorrow’s leaders today, and it is my hope that they will lead by operating under the paradigm of leadership through service.  I am committed to supporting their development in every way that I can, and I believe all of the fine men and women on faculty and staff at Allen Academy are, as well.   Today’s menu is just a simple service of slider hamburgers, assorted chips, fresh greens, corn on the cob, and apples; executed well of course, but all things you could find anywhere in the BCS area on any given day.  On a day like today, it seems fitting to remember how good we really have it by enjoying some of the simple pleasures of living in America on our plates.

Chef Dave

Pandora’s Box (Menu: Sep. 10, 2014)

2014 What’s Hot Survey Top 5 (Source: National Restaurant Association)

There are several interesting things happening in the food industry today.  There is a growing culinary trend called “fusion” that is basically the combination of foods from more than one culture into new dishes.  This trend is so powerful, that it can be tracked.  The National Restaurant Association attempts to capture the latest culinary trends by sending out an annual survey to chefs all over the country.  It is called the What’s Hot survey, and you can read the results by clicking here.  Other big trends on the survey include growing consumer demand for healthier ingredients on menus, and demand for better food on children’s menus.  Yay!  Restaurants are taking note everywhere.

Alina and I helped launch a family restaurant in Louisiana in 2012, and we created a menu that fused Cajun flavors with Southeast Asian flavors that represented Alina’s family.  Alina’s family comes from Laos, which is between the countries of Thailand and Vietnam.  Interestingly, both cuisine styles share a common influence from colonial French culinary techniques.  This helped us combine ingredients successfully.  Creating nontraditional menus can be dangerous for a restaurant though, if people don’t like it.  It takes a lot of courage to try new things like this.

We created a Southern version of a traditional Vietnamese pork sandwich, with a baguette. We called it a banh mi slider. (Photo: Shreveport-Bossier CTB)

But the fusion trend may be about more than fun food.  It may reveal human beings to be an ever evolving, fusion of cultures into what may one day become a single global culture.  As an example, there is a great Facebook page called Humans of New York (HONY). (Check it out here.)  The creator basically goes around New York and randomly interviews people, asking a few questions, and the answers are amazing!  HONY is actually on a world tour right now, and those mini interviews are even more amazing, because they demonstrate that people, no matter where they are in the world, have the same basic needs, fears, desires, and joys.  HONY is presently in the Ukraine, where one of our fine Rams is originally from.

Interestingly, while a global society that has access to information is a wonderful thing that creates potential for even more celebration of humanity, sometimes communication can spread fear.  For example, the ancient Greek story of Pandora talks about the loss of human innocence that came as the result of the curiosity of the first woman, Pandora.  In a nutshell, Pandora opened a box given to her as a wedding present from the Greek god Zeus, despite the fact that Zeus warned her not to, and released hate, sadness, and a lot of really bad stuff into the world.  Pandora was finally able to shut the box, but it was too late.  In the story, Pandora’s husband later reopens the box and finds hope, which he then releases into the world.  The idea behind the story is designed to warn the reader that all choices have consequences.  But human curiosity has led to both great failures and achievements.  And curiosity is directly responsible for what I think is humanity’s greatest achievement, surviving for millions of years.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s “Pandora”, 1879. (Derived from: Wikipedia)

But only about four and a half years ago, people thought that another “Pandora’s box” was being opened.  The European Organization for Nuclear Research (also known as CERN), a group of physicists and engineers whose mission is to study the fundamental structure of the universe (read more here), used an enormous underground facility called the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) to in hopes of creating a particle that theoretically exists called the Higgs Boson. (Read about it here.)  It is a subatomic particle that is thought to attain great mass after passing through a field that apparently exists everywhere in the universe, and has the ability to transfer that mass, the understanding of which may help explain how energy is converted into matter.  But it takes an enormous amount of energy to test this, pretty much by smashing other particles together.  So CERN built an underground facility that is 17 miles in circumference, and 574 ft beneath Geneva, Switzerland, just so they could make two particles travel super fast and go SMASH! That might be the worst explanation of Higgs Boson ever, and I can hardly wait to hear what Mr. Finley thinks about it. 🙂

Well, in 1993 a physicist named Leon Lederman called the Higgs Boson particle the “God particle” as a way of getting attention and support for these kinds of experiments, and he sure did.  He believed like many that this particle may help explain how everything in the physical universe was made, and the name he used was apparently meant to make people link the ideas of creating matter out of energy, and the power of God.  That scared a lot of people for different reasons.  Right up to the day that the LHC made its first smash test, people who were scared tried to stop the test or express concern, and some thought that such a test could even cause a black hole to form in the earth and destroy us all.  The test occurred.  There was no black hole.  And we’re all still here.

Stephen Hawking experiencing zero gravity. (Source: NASA)

Fear can paralyze our minds from doing what they do best – think.  Fear is in my opinion the opposite of love.  Love expressed can cause joy.  Joy can lead to inspiration.  And inspiration can lead to creativity.  HOWEVER!  Two days ago, the most famous theoretical physicist and cosmologist alive today, Stephen Hawking, said that it is in fact possible for such a test to destroy the earth. (Read about his statements here.)

Uh-ohhhh.

Of course, he also said that for that to happen, a smash test would have to take place in a collider the size of the earth itself.  Whew!  We’re safe.  Well, since there is no need to worry about a black hole, my team has decided to put fears aside and smash a little Greek and Swiss food together into a meal we hope you enjoy.  Yes, we’re having a little fun with history, as usual.  Hey, we know pretty much everybody at Allen Academy likes beef, pasta, and chocolate cake, anyway. 🙂

May you all find the courage within yourself to think past any fears that are holding you back, and make today one of your best ever.

Chef Dave

These United States (Menu: Sep. 9, 2014)

Map of the United States. (Photo: Wikipedia)

In 1776, the Continental Congress, representing the original thirteen American colonies, officially named the new country the United States.  Today, there are 50 states and a federal district in Washington, D.C.  The United States additionally has five populated, and nine un-populated territories.  These territories exist in the Pacific, such as Guam, and the Caribbean, to include the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.  According to the Wikipedia webpage for the United States, the country has a population of approximately 318 million people, making it the third-largest country by population. (Click here to navigate to the wiki page.)  Now, consider how many cultures are present here at Allen Academy, and then think about how many exist around the United States as a whole.  How did this happen?

Well, the story of the United States is about explorers, and native peoples, and the interactions that took place between all the groups that found themselves here.  In our area of the country, Spanish explorer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca drifted his way across from east to west on an expedition in the year 1527 that took eight years to complete, before returning home to Spain. (Read about Cabeza de Vaca here at PBS.com)   That was 93 years before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, which became the first English settlement in the United States.  Because Alina and I lived in Massachusetts and New Hampshire for many years, we used to visit Plymouth.  The rock where the pilgrims are supposed to have set foot on land for the first time is actually quite small.  This is because the rock was split a few times, so that only a small reminder is left.  But the city of Plymouth surrounds the site, and is actually very busy in the summer, when all the vacationers are visiting.

Spanish Explorer Cabeza de Vaca by Artist Tom Lea.

It is very hard to imagine how the United States has grown over time.  But as new immigrants arrived in the country, their cultures mixed with Native American cultures, and today we celebrate hundreds of amazing diverse groups of people.  Last year, the kitchen celebrated many of the cultures represented by students of Allen Academy.  Do you remember the day we made all those dumplings?   I always think about you, and where you and your ancestors come from, and how I can celebrate that with you.  And even if you are not from the United States, you are still part of the American story, and certainly a big part of the Allen Academy story.

There are so many stories in the United States, and because each one celebrates one or more cultures, there are plenty of recipes to celebrate.  One of the fun things about food in the United States, cities and states claim certain dishes.  Examples include New England style clam chowder, Boston baked beans, California rolls (sushi), Buffalo wings, and Mississippi mud pie.  Some states claim certain produce, based on their abundance within the industry, such as Georgia peaches, Florida oranges, Texas pecans, Washington apples, and Idaho potatoes.  To me, this demonstrates a sort of pride in the place that people call home.  Of course, the Allen kitchen loves celebrating all of these culinary delights!

Sandra Lee’s cheesesteak. (Photo derived from: Food Network)

And that is exactly what the menu for Tuesday, September the 9th is all about.  We are going to combine two favorites, Texas Toast and Philly cheesesteaks, into one sandwich!  Of course our fries with be from Idaho, and are fruit will combine ripe strawberries with some of those amazing Georgia peaches.  And because it is a special day, we are going to finish lunch with New York style cheese cake bites!  We hope you enjoy a few old favorites from these Untied States.

Chef Dave

Allegria! (Menu: Sep. 8, 2014)

A self portrait of Michelangelo Buonarroti. (Photo: Michelangelo.com)

Bongiorno!

Today marks the anniversary of Michelangelo’s unveiling of his sculpture “David” in Florence, Italy.  Michelangelo presented the statue in the year 1504, 510 years ago!  (Read about it here.)  Now think about this for a second.  In those days, there were no robots to help, no computer aided design (CAD) programs, and certainly no 3-D printers.  Michelangelo had to visualize, then carve and polish his marble stone masterpiece all on his own.  And what is even more amazing is that the statue of the hero from the biblical story of David and Goliath is 17 feet tall!  Although it was moved from its original location, the statue of David has always been in the city of Florence.  This is probably because nobody wanted to move a 17 foot tall sculpture made out of solid rock!  Instead, people have enjoyed one of the most beautiful pieces of art for centuries.

Face of Michelangelo’s “David”. (Photo derived from Wikipedia)

According to the website dedicated to the sculptor, Michelangelo was born on March 6, 1475 in the town of Caprese, in the Republic of Florence, which today is located in the region of Tuscany. (Read about it here.)  Michelangelo’s lifetime occurred within a period of time in European history known as the Renaissance.  This was a time of great enlightenment in the arts and science both, with many great achievements across the continent.  Another man that lived during that time was Leonardo da Vinci.  Like many people of that time, both men were very creative, and understood how to use science and art together to create beautiful things, while doing what they loved.

And that brings us back to the menu.  Since today’s events are centered on Italy, the kitchen team decided that we just had to make Italian food.  So in honor of Michelangelo, and the town of Caprese, we are going to serve lasagna rolls and Caprese salad.  This salad is a popular dish made of only a few ingredients: basil, sometimes spinach, tomatoes, and fresh mozzarella.  Caprese salad is often served with balsamic vinaigrette, but you have your choice.  I also baked fresh focaccia bread for you.  And because we are celebrating Italian culture and food, we absolutely must serve red and green grapes today.  A lunch dedicated to honoring of one of humanity’s finest creators.

A beautiful version of Caprese salad. (Photo: thepioneerwoman.com)

Speaking of creativity, one of my personal heroes is a man named Joseph Chilton Pearce.  He is a researcher, professor, and author, and has been writing about child development and how people learn for a long time. (Read about him here)  Mr. Pearce has argued that people learn through creative play, from when we are very young until we are very old.  He thinks that we actually learn about the world we live in when we are at play, such as laws of physics like gravity.  It sure makes sense to me, I used to fall off the monkey bars a lot.  I also started playing in the kitchen by baking desserts for my mom when I was nine years old.  I was fascinated by the way all the ingredients my mom mixed together became something completely different and wonderful.

Through that play, I learned that cooking is both science and art.  You need to understand sciences like biology, chemistry, and physics to cook.  But creating recipes and dishes is a very expressive activity, and that expression becomes art.  I know that I love my job so much, that some days it does not feel like work at all.  Working with science to create art feels more like play.

Maybe today, try thinking that life is play; even in class.  I saw a t-shirt the other day that said something really cool.  It said, “Do what you love, love what you do.”  The statement means to do something that brings you joy, and then remember to just be happy while you are having the experience.  Do you suppose that Michelangelo loved the process of sculpting David?  I’ll bet it brought him great joy.

The Italian word for joy is “Allegria”.

Chef Dave

Might Be Lost, But You Can Find it Here (Menu: Sep. 5, 2014)

Louisiana map image from Google. (Photo: Google)

Have you ever been to Louisiana?  It isn’t too far from here.  If you have, you may have eaten either Cajun or Creole style food.  I love the food of Louisiana.  It is so rich in flavors, textures, and presentations.  Alina and I have been chefs in the Shreveport area.  You have probably also eaten more classical French food than you realize.  And then there are just some foods that are just plain “New Orleans” style.  Like New Orleans style French bread.

Generally speaking, the more fat in a bread recipe, the softer it is.  And since bread is made by allowing live yeast to feed off of the flour in a dough and making bubbles that lets the dough “rise”, punching down the dough (literally collapsing the bubbles) after it rises a few times will result in small, more uniform holes in the dough when it bakes.  We call the texture of bread the “crumb”.  You can obviously tell the difference between a real crusty baguette and a big ol’ soft French loaf.  Well in New Orleans, there is a style of big loaf bread that is more like a crusty little French baguette.  New Orleans style bread has a very crunchy exterior made by using flour with a high protein percentage and little to no added fats, like butter or oil.  And the crumb in New Orleans style bread can be full of irregular holes that indicate that the bread was not punched down before baking.  This is important for certain recipes.

Different breads made by different methods and ingredients. (Photo: Langlinais Bakery, New Orleans)

Well, the menu for Friday, September the 5^th is not only a Fun Friday menu, but it is a French Fun Friday menu…and a breakfast French Fun Friday menu at that!  We are going to celebrate a very old and popular French dish – French toast.  This dish has historically been served as a breakfast, lunch, and a dessert.  In French-influenced cultures, like that around New Orleans, the name of this dish is called “pain perdu”.  It sounds like “pan per-dew”.  This dish name translates into English as “lost bread”.  Why is it lost?  Well, it is actually a play on words.  When French bread got old and stale, and a little bit dry, people would call the bread “lost”.  One of the ways people figured out how to save it before it went bad was to dip it in eggs and fry it up.  It actually works better to use stale, dry bread for this dish because the bread holds up better.  And it is even better with New Orleans style French bread because its firmness allows it to keep its shape after cooking.  This makes it able to stand up to sauces, some of which can be thick.

In French cuisine, ripe fruits can be cooked into a dessert that combines the fruit with a syrup, called a compote.   The Allen Academy kitchen certainly goes through hundreds of bananas a week, and when we have too many going ripe, we cook them to use in other recipes, such as banana bread muffins, and well, banana compote.  We make our compote by cooking our bananas with cinnamon, maple, and vanilla.  Yum!  I will always offer maple syrup for breakfast but I hope you will try our compotes whenever we prepare them.  Banana compote on top of really thick sliced pain perdu is amazing!

A winter fruit compote. (Photo: BBC Goodfood.com)

Now, we always serve a meat with our breakfast, and for this day we have a Cajun style sausage that is a bit spicy.  Hey, we had to stick with a Louisiana theme.  Of course, for those Rams that cannot have pork, and the Cajun sausage is a beef-pork blend, we will offer turkey sausage.  In fact, any day that we serve sausage, we will always provide the option to have a non-pork sausage.

We truly hope you enjoy Fun Friday breakfast, or lunch, whatever you want to call it.  Bon Appétit, y’all!

Chef Dave